


Complications

by vellaphoria



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Investigative Journalism, POV Outsider, The League of Assassins (DCU), brief allusions to lazarus pits, brief mention of Ra's al Ghul, dark!Tim, or at least morally dubious!Tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 19:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: There are a lot of ways an investigative journalist would expect to meet Wayne Enterprises' CEO and heir apparent.Seeing him sitting at the head of a boardroom table is expected.Seeing him sitting at the head of a boardroom table while surrounded by actual, real-life ninja isnot.





	Complications

In his time working at the Gotham Gazette, Marcus had seen a lot of shit. Sure, there was the simple stuff. Things like robberies. Gangs. Murder. But those were in every city.

Gotham was different. It had a crime beat like any other city. But it also had a _super crime_  beat.

In his first year on the job, Marcus got wrapped up in an assignment that would lead to an undercover infiltration of one of Two-Face’s gangs, a corruption case with evidence so thorough it finally got Mayor Hady kicked out of office, and three different encounters with exploding penguins that, quite frankly, utterly destroyed his ability to truly enjoy nature documentaries. With his camera and some good luck, the results had won him a national award for photojournalism.  

It came with the city. And a Gotham beat reporter wasn’t worth their salt if they couldn’t handle a little weird.

But this went beyond weird. It busted straight  _through_  weird, obliterated bizarre, and landed itself in outright  _insane_  territory.

Because, to be honest, Marcus really wasn’t sure what he was seeing. If you had asked him right then, he would have told you that he had just stumbled into a Wayne Enterprises boardroom. And in that boardroom sat Timothy Drake-Wayne, the formerly presumed dead, inexplicably teenaged interim CEO of Gotham’s most notable, most charitable, and occasionally most notorious corporation.

That wasn’t the weird part. Not even close.

Because surrounding the kid were not members of the WE board of directors. They weren’t the company’s staff and employees. They weren’t even the collection of eclectic ‘family’ that always seemed to be in the Waynes’ orbit.

They were ninja. 

Actual, honest to god, real-life ninja.

Everywhere.

They sat in the other boardroom chairs. They leaned against the walls. One was even spreadeagled on the table while another two tried to see how many of those complimentary Wayne Tower cups they could stack on the first ninja’s body.

The count was impressive.

At the head of the table, Mr. Drake-Wayne had propped his feet on its mahogany surface. He leaned back in the oversized, leather chair to a point where it was nearly falling over. The only counterweight that kept that from happening was a leather-clad woman with a shaved head so shiny that Marcus almost had to squint against it.

He stood. He stared. It was a solid minute before any of them acknowledged him.

With a groan that sounded much more teenaged than the high-end, Western-style business suit made him look, Mr. Drake-Wayne finally looked at Marcus.

Thirty ninja looked with him.

“You look a little lost,” Mr. Drake-Wayne said casually, as if at least five of the ninja hadn’t just drawn weapons that Marcus knew for a  _fact_  were not considered legal in America.

The harsh boardroom light glinted off of them. Mr. Drake-Wayne’s narrowed eyes pierced through him with the focus of a hypodermic needle. Marcus swallowed his panic.

“Um,” he started, eloquently. “That’s one way to put it. I was just looking for the…”

There was no sound but the squeak of leather as the bald woman clenched fingers on the back of Mr. Drake-Wayne’s chair. Her hand drifted to her hip, beneath her jacket. Marcus had been in this business long enough to know when someone was packing heat.

He took one step back. Another.

“You know what? It’s not important. I’m just going to…”

“Wait.” Mr. Drake-Wayne held up a hand. The back of Marcus’ foot hit something, and when he turned around all he could see was dark ninja clothing and the wide, sharp smile of a woman he didn’t feel particularly keen on messing with.

“Now, I’d like to believe that you could just walk out of here and keep quiet about it until the mechanisms of the powers that be have come to fruition.”

The was a hand on his shoulder. Marcus whirled around again and found himself facing Mr. Drake-Wayne himself. He was shorter than he’d thought. He’d crossed the room without Marcus hearing him. The room was too big for that to have been physically possible.

Marcus looked down. This close, Mr. Drake-Wayne looked even younger. But there was something about his eyes…

“If my associate were here, he’d probably have you disposed of as quietly as possible.”

Marcus might as well have been a statue for how still he stood.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said. Self-preservation, if anything.

Mr. Drake-Wayne smiled. There was something deeply disconcerting about it.

“I believe you.” The hand tightened on his shoulder. “Which is why today is your lucky day. My associate isn’t here, and between you and me, I find his methods rather  _distasteful._ ”

The bone in his shoulder felt like it was straining beneath the pressure. How did someone so small have a grip that was so  _strong?_

“I walked into an empty boardroom,” Marcus said, half-shaking, “Must have gotten turned around, somehow.”

Mr. Drake-Wayne smiled. “That’s good to hear.”

He held a hand out. Snapped his fingers.

The bald woman approached. At a gesture from her, Marcus put his arms out for her to pat him down. Hands traced his sides, thorough but strictly professional. Which was more than he’d normally expect from a Gotham pat-down.

The woman tensed, hands going rigid over his side-holster. She nodded to a nearby ninja – the smiling woman from earlier – and suddenly there was a knife to his throat. Shifting around him, the bald woman reached beneath his jacket.

Her tension only receded a fraction when she realized the holster had been modified to hold something other than a weapon. With a grunt, she unclasped it, pulling out the camera he’d snuck into the building. It was just a little thing compared to what he normally hauled around the city, but Wayne Enterprises security has always been pretty top-notch. And it wasn’t like he could have snuck his normal equipment through a third story bathroom window… but he’d been following a lead on the ownership of some shady warehouse-based operations that had popped up at the docks. And more often than not investigative journalism operated outside the bounds of propriety and security checks.

The woman inspected it. Her cold eyes flashed across it, fingers prodding for anything that might be hidden or dangerous.

Suddenly, her eyes snapped up to his face.

“All clear,” she said, waving off the ninja. “Just a camera, Boss.”

If Marcus didn’t know better, he would have said that Mr. Drake-Wayne laughed a little at that. It hadn’t seemed that funny.

“What goes around…” he muttered. The woman handed him the camera.

He took his hand off Marcus’ shoulder to inspect it. “Good quality, but not what I’d expect from someone of your caliber.”

Except for Mr. Drake-Wayne’s, all eyes were on Marcus. The bald woman’s hand drifted back beneath her jacket. Gunmetal beneath dark leather.

Mr. Drake-Wayne rested a hand on her arm.

“That won’t be necessary.”

She didn’t budge. For a moment, the tension in the room wavered and frayed.

Finally, Mr. Drake-Wayne looked up, glancing behind him.

“Stand down.” His voice held a sort of authority Marcus didn’t often hear from anyone younger than thirty-five, let alone a kid who all of Gotham’s tabloids said wouldn’t even be twenty for another few months.

The tension drained from the ninja, and they began to drift off.

“Now, Mr. Yao.”

Marcus almost died on the spot.  _How_  the hell did this kid know his name? National awards aside, he didn’t think he’d even be  _near_  Mr. Wayne-Drake’s radar.

“I have a certain admiration for people who sneak into places they aren’t supposed to. When they do it with a camera, especially.”

If that was sarcasm, he had no idea. Marcus couldn’t get a read on this kid.  

“But you must understand that the  _sensitive_  nature of what we’re doing here requires a bit more… let’s say secrecy. While we do live in something of a post-truth era and the value of facts is quite diminished, my associate does hate _complications_. Perhaps –“

“Boss,” the bald woman coughed into her fist, interrupting.

“Hm?” Mr. Drake-Wayne asked, turning to her.

“You’re monologuing.”

He blinked at her. Blinked again.

“ _Fuck_.” There was more emotion in that single word than there had been in everything else the kid had said that night  _combined_.

“Ugh, don’t tell him about this?” Mr. Drake-Wayne asked. He sounded like a disgruntled teenager.  

The woman gave him a look that read something like  _why are you discussing this in front of the prisoner?_

“You know we won’t,” she said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Drake-Wayne replied. “That’s true.”

He turned back to Marcus.

“Sorry about that. In summary: pics or it didn’t happen.” He snapped his fingers once more. Another ninja came up to him.

“Take anything from floors thirty through forty-two off of this," he told the ninja. "Replace it with the pictures from that time Tam found Lex’s people trying to break into our server room.”

The ninja nodded and ran off through door Marcus had come in through.

Mr. Drake-Wayne looked back to Marcus.

“That’ll probably take a few minutes,” he said. “We’re not sure how many pictures you took before you ran in here.”

Marcus had taken a lot of pictures. Nearly a third of them were about to be deleted and replaced with some sort of secret corporate war blackmail.

White collar was not supposed to be his beat.

But this  _was_  Gotham.

“Your patience is appreciated. I realize you might have walked into some things that would best remain unexplained, primarily for your own safety, but I’d like for no one to say that I’m not a good host. So.” Mr. Drake-Wayne glanced at the remaining ninja. They scurried out of the room. The bald woman put her back to the wall next to the door and crossed her arms, staying put.

“While you wait, how about we sit down and talk like civilized people? I saw your work with the Iceberg Lounge piece. Compelling stuff, if you don’t mind me saying.”

The kid crossed the room, gesturing to a chair to the left of the one at the head of the table.

A glare from the bald woman told him there wasn’t much of a choice, so Marcus followed.

A ninja seemed to emerge from the wall, carrying coffee service in what looked to be the Iranian style. Mr. Drake-Wayne narrowed his eyes. “I thought I told Ra’s…”

The ninja shrugged.

“Fine.” He turned back to Marcus. “Sit. Stay a while. I’m between meetings and bored out of my mind.”

“Um…” Marcus started.

Mr. Drake-Wayne’s smile widened a fraction. Something flashed in his eyes.

For a single moment, his irises looked like they were a startling, lurid  _green._

“That wasn’t a request.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you combine a year's worth of pent-up grad school stress, a comparatively free-ish afternoon, and a three-sentence section of fic lifted from another project that wasn't even remotely related to how this turned out.
> 
> But, hey. Morally dubious Tim is always fun.
> 
> (The journalist survives. Mr. Marcus Yao goes back to the Gotham Gazette with nothing on the paper trail of warehouse ownership but plenty of evidence of corporate espionage. When the resulting story makes its way to Metropolis, Lex is tied up with _months_ worth of legal battles... which he inevitably wins because he's a bastard like that, but it still takes him off the board for a while. When Lex finds out about it, Tim has one of his own spies get a picture of Lex's face mid-eye-twitch. He gets the picture framed and hangs it on his office wall for three weeks until Ra's gets annoyed that his attention is diverted and "disposes of it")
> 
> (He doesn't know about the digital copies)


End file.
